This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Alder, and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

My tongue is just dancing acrobatically, and it's hitting very specific targets inside

my mouth.

And I'm timing it with my exhalations, and I'm also timing it with closing and opening

my vocal cords to voice some consonants and unvoiced others, so much is going on.

That is really the dance, the acrobatic gymnastics that permits us to speak, to beam our thoughts

into each other's heads by making the air vibrate in interesting ways, which is really

what we're doing with our voices.

That's the voice, the gravelly voice of journalist John Colapinto.

John blew out his voice singing in a pickup rock band while working at Rolling Stone magazine.

His curiosity about what happened to his voice led to an illuminating and entertaining

book titled, This Is the Voice.

And it led to some unusual insights, like how the evolution of the human voice began in

fish 400 million years ago, and why podcasts have become so popular today.

This is going to be fun to talk with you today, John, because you're dealing with a subject

that I'm fascinated with, which is my own voice.

Your voice is so distinctive.

It's all I've been thinking about, like my God to be interviewed by Alan Alder about

the voice.

I never knew it was distinctive until an operator on information, when I called information

...